To accurately diagnose various tissue diseases and conditions, medical personnel must remove one or more samples of tissue from the body of a patient. This process of harvesting tissue from the body is known as a biopsy. Once the tissue sample or samples are removed and sent to a pathology laboratory, the tissue will go through a series of procedures performed by a histotechnician and, ultimately, a pathologist, in order to diagnose the tissue. The present invention generally relates to those procedures that are normally performed by the histotechnician to prepare the tissue sample or samples into slides that may be analyzed under a microscope by the pathologist.
Although the singular term “sample” is used throughout this specification, it should be understood that this term likewise encompasses plural “samples” as well. Once a tissue sample is removed from the body of a patient, it is typically placed into a specimen container containing a tissue fixative solution and then the container is transported to a pathology laboratory. The tissue will undergo a process known as “grossing-in” in the pathology lab during which a histotechnician will retrieve the tissue sample from the container, typically cut the tissue into appropriate sizes for tissue processing, place individual samples into the appropriate sized small plastic tissue cassettes, and assign tracking numbers to each cassette. These tracking numbers are then logged into a tracking system used in the laboratory. For the smallest tissue samples, which may only be scrapings, the cassette will have fine mesh openings on the sides and bottoms. In other situations involving very small tissue samples, the samples are placed into a bag that resembles a tea bag and prevents the smallest tissue samples from escaping. Larger tissue samples are placed into cassettes having somewhat larger slotted openings which are again smaller than the tissue sample inside the cassette.
The cassettes are then placed into a stainless steel perforated basket and run through a tissue processing machine, often overnight. This machine uses a combination of vacuum, heat, and chemicals to remove the interstitial fluids. Once the fluids have been removed from the tissue samples, the processing machine immerses the tissues samples in a bath of molten paraffin so that the interstices in the tissue are replaced with paraffin. The histotechnician then removes the basket from the machine and removes the individual tissue cassettes. At an embedding station, which has a molten paraffin reservoir and dispenser, the histotechnician will individually remove the tissue from each cassette. The histotechnician must carefully orient the tissue sample, based on tissue type, into a stainless steel base mold which is roughly the size of the tissue cassette and is partially filled with molten paraffin. The molten paraffin is then rapidly cooled on a refrigerated plate, which may be a thermal electric cooler (TEC), to partially solidify the paraffin thereby holding the tissue sample in the proper orientation. The cassette is then placed on top of the base mold and paraffin is poured through the opened top of the cassette into the base mold. The cassette changes its function at this point in the procedure from a tissue holding component to a fixation device for later use in taking shavings from the solidified wax or paraffin. The base mold is chilled until all of the molten paraffin has solidified and the histotechnician removes the stainless steel base mold from the block of embedded paraffin. The tissue sample is thus embedded within a rectangular block of paraffin with a plastic tissue cassette on the opposite side. As with the tissue processing machine, the embedding process is accomplished in a batch fashion during which an average histotechnician may embed approximately 40 to 60 cassettes per hour.
The blocks of hardened paraffin containing the embedded tissue samples are then ready to be sliced into extremely thin sections for placement on a microscope slide. This slicing operation is accomplished in a device known as a microtome. The histotechnician mounts the embedded tissue block in a chuck on the microtome which is sized to accept the side of the block that has the embedded plastic cassette. The histotechnician can then begin slicing the paraffin block which has the tissue sample embedded opposite to the plastic cassette surface. This yields a ribbon of individual slices of the tissue embedded in the paraffin. The action of the microtome causes the individual slices to stick together when done properly and, subsequently, these very thin ribbons of slices are floated into a water bath and a glass slide is carefully placed underneath the slice. The slice, with the thin sectioned tissue sample embedded therein, is then adhered to the top of the slide.
When the histotechnician has enough slides from the tissue sample, the slides are placed into an automatic staining machine. The staining machine goes through a series of infiltrating steps to stain the different tissue and cells of the slide different colors. This helps the pathologist identify different structures and makes it easier to find any abnormalities in the tissue. After the staining procedure is complete, the slides are cover slipped and prepared for the pathologist to place under a microscope to analyze.
Based on the summary of the procedure provided above, it will be appreciated that conventional tissue sample handling and processing is a very labor-intensive process involving several manual steps performed by a histotechnician. Thus, repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome are prevalent. This is especially true with the tissue sample embedding process. These multiple manual operations and redundant handling increase the likelihood of human error and, moreover, require highly trained and skilled histotechnicians to ensure that the tissue samples ultimately adhered to the slides for analysis by the pathologist are in an optimum condition and orientation to make accurate diagnoses. The conventional methods for preparing tissue biopsy slides have been batch mode processes, as mentioned above, in which the histotechnician would move from process step to process step with a preselected number of cassettes based on the speed at which that histotechnician can operate.
One system and method has been developed to increase the productivity and reduce the occurrences of human error during the process of preparing tissue samples for biopsy analysis. In this regard, U.S. Pat. No. 5,817,032, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein, relates to a tissue trapping and supporting device, which may be a cassette, and which may be cut with a microtome. When a cassette is used, the tissue sample is immobilized within the cassette and subjected to the process for replacing tissue fluids with wax. Then, the tissue sample and the cassette are sliced at the same time for mounting on microscope slides. Because the tissue sample is never removed from the cassette from the time it is processed in the tissue processing machine to the time that it is cut with the microtome, a significant amount of time is saved and the chance for human error is significantly reduced due to the elimination of separate tissue handling steps. This patent also generally discusses an automated process which even further reduces the handling steps during the entire procedure.
In spite of the various improvements made in this field, there is an increasing need for additional reductions in handling and improvements in throughput production and consistent quality of embedded tissue samples.